A World of Warcraft Pet Battle Blog

Category Archives: pet profile

With this little guy retiring from the Battle.net shop in just a few short weeks, I figured I’d give him a quick feature, if you’re debating whether to spend your hard-earned real life cash on him before he goes away.

I usually don’t focus on the visuals of pets too closely, but this guy has one of the cutest idle animations I’ve seen, where he paws at a gold fly that spawns near him occasionally. All his animations are adorable, but that one in particular makes me want to pet him. He’ll also fly behind you, and until Gloria’s Glorious Gliding Goodies are realized in WoD that’s a pretty unique commodity.

The Guardian Cub has a pretty standard cluster of usual flying moves: Cyclone, Wild Winds & Slicing Wind. He’s also one of a very few Flying battle pets with Magic offensive abilities, with Onyx Bite in his moveset. Nether Rays are the only others. Rounding out his moveset are the Pyrrhic Reckless Strike and the damage-boosting Beast ability Roar.

The issue with this pet is that, although his moves are solid, his stats aren’t the best. Even with that unique Magic ability, Nether Rays are more versatile, and have better available stat allocation, so this pet is hardly a must-have for battling.

The really unique thing about this pet is that, to my knowledge, he’s the only battle pet which is both available for purchase with real cash and also able to be caged in-game. People cottoned on to this scheme real quick, so the value plummeted soon after they first appeared in the shop. I bought mine ages ago for under 2000 gold. However, since the announcement that this battle pet is being retired, the gold value has skyrocketed again, and there are very few available for trade. It’s hard to say what’s going to happen to the gold value after it’s retired, but if you’re looking to legally swap some real life cash for some in-game gold this may be your ticket, even if your gratification is a wee bit delayed.

Until he’s retired, possibly as soon as June 18th, the Guardian Cub is still available for purchase here at the Battle.net store: (link removed)

edit – As of this later date, the Guardian Cub is no longer available for purchase from the battle.net store. You may still be able to find one on your local auction house.

This incorporeal little guy has been breaking hearts since battle pets came to be.

Nether Faerie Dragons are Dragonkin battle pets which like to hang out around Dire Maul in Feralas. They can be tamed in the open air area in the world, and are not present in the Dire Maul instance. They share a moveset with the very colorful Sprite Darters, also found in Feralas, but the Sprite Darters are drops. The two share a very similar skin as well, but Nether Faerie Dragons are transparent, which can make them just a bit difficult to screenshot, thank you very much.

Much of a Nether Faerie Dragon’s utility is wrapped up in Life Exchange, which is a fun, quirky ability to use. It equalizes the health between your Faerie Dragon and its target. Initially it completely steamrolled the Beasts of Fable. If your Nether Faerie Dragon starts off at 1384 health and Dos-Ryga starts off with 1942, if your Dragon acts first, it would hit Dos for 279 (the difference of the two numbers, 558, halved, to bring both pets to equal health). But in the earlier iteration of the Beasts of Fable, where Dos-Ryga’s health pool was over 3K, with no damage cap on Life Exchange, it was truly devastating.

Now, it’s not quite so key, because of a series of nerfs. That’s alright though, because initially, my strategy for the Beasts was pretty much just frontload a couple dragons, and now it takes a bit more strategy, which pretty much always means more fun. And still, to use Life Exchange properly involves a good bit of timing and luck, because otherwise you could heal your opponent, or get killed before you can pull it off.

Beyond that, the Nether Faerie Dragon has a handful of Flying abilities (Slicing Wind and Cyclone) and a handful of Magic abilities (Arcane Blast and Moonfire), which, along with the Dragonkin family defense against Magic, makes it a really good choice to counter Flying battle pets. Sharing a slot with Life Exchange is Evanescence, a move ability similar to a rabbit’s Dodge. It can be more useful than Life Exchange, depending on your opponent, but it’s less unique.

Also, I’m kind of afraid if I make this poor thing fade away more than it already has, it may just up & disappear altogether.

The Saint Patrick’s Day holiday, not celebrated in WoW, has always been one of my favorites. Mostly for obvious reasons. I figured it would be fun to profile one of my favorite pets as well, even though I’m kind of breaking one of my own rules by doing so.

I’m blaming green beer.

The Emerald Whelpling is a pricey pet, with a rough average around 7000g. If you’re particularly enterprising, you can farm one up yourself. Their spawn point has moved from the Swamp of Sorrows to Feralas, from the corrupted whelplings near the portal to the Emerald Dream, but the drop rate continues to be vanishingly small.

This particular profile is mostly for seasonal flavor and sentimentality, but the Emerald Whelpling’s battling prowess can’t be denied either.

Though it doesn’t do too much in PVP, in PVE it’s a workhorse with 2 strong heals (Emerald Dream and Tranquility) to choose between, a couple of magic moves, one of which is the synergistic weather effect Moonfire and the other the straightforward Emerald Bite. She also has a Dragonkin nuke with Breath. Her moveset is rounded out with the utility shield Emerald Presence.

In a lot of situations, a far less expensive but still somewhat rare Emerald Proto-Whelp can fill a similar role. Especially in PVE the two are fairly similar. The big difference is that the Emerald Whelpling’s moveset can be swapped, so she can turn from a defensive tank with Emerald Presence into a damage-dealing phenom with Moonfire and Emerald Bite. There are many other Dragonkin battle pets available to fill the damaging role too, like the Nether Faerie Dragon which is tamed in Feralas, it’s just somewhat rare for a pet to be able to fill both roles all on its own.

Ironically, I occasionally explore parts of the game which don’t involve either battle pets or my druid. In fact, sometimes I just want to get out some aggression and punch some dudes in the head. And though that’s kinda what twitter is for, there are places to get my kicks in WoW, too. You just have to know where to go.

The Brawler’s Guild is something I just recently started playing through, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. It’s oddly similar to pet battles, in that there’s a puzzle element, but it’s way less, “Death Adder Hatchling I choose you!” and more “THERE IS A CAT EATING MY FACE RUUUUN.”

One (literally) small incentive kept me going (though I ought to be careful slinging around that ‘small’ stuff while playing a gnome). When you hit rank 4 in the Brawler’s Guild, meaning you’ve done the first 12 fights successfully, you can buy a Clock Em battle pet of your own for 20-30 silver (the price varies slightly based on reputation discounts). This is the only way to obtain a Clock’em of your own, so if you want a tiny robot with enormous spiked fists of fury, better get sharpening your daggers and make your way to either the Deeprun Tram or the Brawlgar Arena. Clock’em starts off Rare and you buy up to 3 as soon as you hit rank 4, but they are uncageable and BoP, so if you want one have to fistfight your way to the top of a pile of corpses.

Clock ‘Em is unique in that he has a full complement of humanoid abilities, but is a mechanical battle pet, so he gets extra utility in the guise of the resurrection mechanical family ability. A few other mechanicals have a couple humanoid abilities, but Clock Em is all but entirely humanoid. Overtune is the one exception, and it’s used primarily to buff Clock Em’s speed, not really as a damage move. That speed buff has a lot of excellent synergy with his Kick move, which stuns if Clock Em goes first. However, Kick shares a slot with the utility move Dodge, which is frequently the better choice. Sharing a slot with Overtune is Counterstrike, which makes sense because Counterstrike has the best functionality if your pet is slower than its opponent. Rounding out his moves in the first slot is either the straightforward humanoid attack Jab, or the slightly odd Haymaker, which has a 50/50 chance to either deal damage and stun your opponent, or miss and stun the caster.

One big thing to be aware of using this battle pet, even in PVE, is cooldowns. Aside from Jab and Overtune, every ability in Clock Em’s moveset has a relatively lengthy cooldown. You need to choose carefully and use your abilities in an order so you’re not cooling your heels for a few turns. Clock Em’s Humanoid damage and Mechanical family make him relatively ideal for killing dragonkin that use a good bit of Magic damage. Unfortunately, Trixxy in Winterspring is the highest level tamer using a setup like this. He fights pretty well against most dragonkin though, as long as they’re not using Elemental damage.

Now, who do I have to garrote to get a cup of coffee in this stinking place?

If there is a thing out in the world that could potentially be made profitable, Goblins will be there. Even love.

Especially love. Goblins feature big in the WoW version of Valentine’s Day, the Love Is In The Air festival. All the vendors are goblins, and the premiere battle pet of the season has always been the Goblinized version of Cupid. Instead of a mischievous little cherub, we get a tiny goblin with taped-on wings, shooting arrows souped up like only a Goblin can.

He used to be extremely difficult to obtain, but now he’s available for a handful of holiday currency in every major city, Horde or Alliance. The 40 tokens you’ll need to trade with yet another Goblin to obtain the Truesilver Shafted Arrow come from a variety of places, but as long as you’re queuing up for the daily boss fight you will get enough by the end of the holiday to purchase one. If not, or if you’re busy with the IRL holiday (you dog you) Peddlefeet is cageable. He starts off as Uncommon so if you’re going the AH route it’s a good idea as always to aim for an upgraded one.

Peddlefeet is a pretty premiere dragonkiller battle pet in PVE. All his moves are humanoid, though they do run the gamut. The only straightforward attack is Bow Shot in the first slot, though Rapid Fire is a fairly straightforward AoE option. He does have a lot of utility with the stun Lovestruck, and the slight chance for stun Perfumed Arrow. Also in his moveset is his Love Potion heal, which seems designed to be annoying in PVP, but gives him extra staying power too.

He is quite suited to killing Yu’la in the Celestial Tournament, and a bit less so for ‘team’ pve dragonkin battle pets, where his stuns will earn you a swap. Humanoids in general are pretty vulnerable in PVP just now, with the prevalence of the undead Val’kyr/beast Death Adder Hatchling combo, but this guy’s final ability makes him even more so. Shot Through The Heart, though interesting, and one of the best lyrics ever, is a charged move for a big wallop, like Deep Breath. It’s really excellent for PVE, but not so much for PVP, where you’re sure to get stunned, blinded or otherwise annihilated in the intervening turn. In general he’s fun to play, but if you come up against any of a number of really common current teams it’s pretty much game over.

Though he’s not a favorite, that last ability makes it all worthwhile, nostalgia-wise.

Even though this song itself is about as Valentine-y as, well, a Goblin.

As you collect more & more battle pets, at specific benchmarks, you’ll get an achievement and a new pet. The first one is the Reeking Pet Carrier at 50 unique pets. This counts, for example, a brown snake and a black snake as 2 different pets even though they’re not exactly special little snowflakes. Who are you trying to fool, snakes? Up until 150 pets and the Littlest Pet Shop achievement, they’re all pretty much duplicates of other pets you can tame or purchase. With that milestone, the Celestial Dragon awarded has both a model vastly unique from any other battle pet in the game and a few unique moves as well.

The unique move is, well. Starfall is similar in nature to Moon Moon’s moon tears, and packs a lot of really cool graphic punch (see above), but as both offense and heal, it just isn’t all that effective, even on 2nd go-around after it’s buffed by its own Moonlight effect. It’s also on a fairly long timer, making it kind of a poor choice unless you’re just grinding wild battles and want to see some stars.

She’s been the recipient of a few nerfs over time. She used to have the much stronger Dragonkin ability Breath instead of the current Elemental Burn in the first slot. Combining this with a strong heal in Ancient Blessing made even stronger with Moonlight in the third slot made for one of my go-to battling grinders. The overall effect was close to a current Spawn of Onyxia with more staying power. But now, she’s not really a first choice. Rounding out her moveset is the offense dampener Roar (though for me this is a poor choice because it deals little damage and that first slot is most of her offense) and the completely bafflingly placed Arcane Storm, which isn’t really a popular choice to begin with.

By now, most WoW players are aware that our favorite scapegoat Greg Street has moved on to Riot Games. As a result, many players were in a tailspin for a while there. Who is going to be at fault for every little aspect of the game that goes awry? Enter Celestalon.

Celestalon’s official title is Technical Games Designer. Though Celestalon’s level of snark isn’t quite what Mr. Street once used, a hashtag (#blamecelestalon) has been circulating, used in the vein of #thanksobama, to blame Celestalon for things that couldn’t possibly have been his fault. So, I’d encourage those of you battlers to #blamecelestalon for the nerf to the Fluxfire Feline, just to make him feel at home.

Or um, because this is supposed to be trying to butter up devs for upcoming information, that’s probably not such a hot idea. Maybe you should just #leavecelestalonalone? I’m kind of bad at this.

The Lunar Festival in WoW is loosely patterned on the celebrations that occur on the Lunar New Year in many Asian countries, with most of the customs portrayed hailing from China. Notable among these for pet battlers is the Lunar Festival Lantern. Over the course of the holiday, you must visit Elders for special tokens. You can then take those tokens and use them to purchase Lunar Festival foods, the high-necked brightly colored gowns and pantsuits, fireworks, and of course, the Lunar Festival Lantern. It’s… oh, what’s that?

Yeah, there’s a slight issue here. The reason I personally have the one and not the other is that, since the advent of account-wide pets, I’ve mostly been playing Horde. Once a character has collected 50 coins, Valadar Starsong in Moonglade sells Horde players the Festival Lantern, and Alliance players the Lunar Lantern. I never really got around to collecting enough coins, involving quite a bit of laborious travel around the continents, on my Alliance character.

If you’re only looking at the movesets, the two are identical. They also share moves with the Enchanted Lantern battle pet which, true to the previous gripe, is crafted by Horde-only enchanters with 525 skill, and all 3 battle pets have identical stats as well. The Alliance enchanting pet, the Magic Lamp, has a vastly different moveset, but identical stats. Luckily, all 4 are also cageable, so if you are diehard FOR THE HORDE, and refuse to even so much as roll an Alliance DK for fast flight and easy Elder NPC visits within a couple hours, you still have some options. Also luckily for the gold makers, like all pets they are account-wide and still command a pretty penny, but especially so if you sell them cross-faction. All 4 also start off as uncommon when attained, making for a really nice payday if you have some flawless Magic upgrade stones kicking around.

These lanterns never really had a heyday as battling pets, but they do have a few tricks. They have a really cool 1-2 punch with the blinding Flash and double-hitting when blinded Light. Sharing Light’s slot is the blocking move Soul Ward. Soul Ward works really well against big single hitters, but falls flat against multi-hit opponents because it only blocks one attack. The alternate in the second slot is Illuminate, which causes the Sunny Day weather effect. The Lanterns don’t have a move which really benefits from the sun, so you may want to pair this pet with something that does.

Both first slot choices are straightforward nukes. Beam is Magic, Burn is Elemental. The former hits slightly less hard and has a slightly higher accuracy as a result. This choice is largely dependent on which pets you’re fighting. If you’re up against any Mechanical, without Burn your lantern is a sitting duck.

In the end, the benefit of this pet is more cosmetic than anything. Like the Elders, it is a peaceful memory of a time gone by.

We’re getting to a weird point in time for many WoW bloggers, and the WoW community as a whole. While most people were very excited at the Warlords of Draenor reveal at Blizzcon, there’s been a dearth of official news since. The gaps have been filled almost entirely via tweetlists (oh and by the way, breeding epic pets are out for WoD, says developer Cory Stockton in this random tweet). As a result, lots of bloggers have taken to fanciful prognostication, mostly about the nature of this or that about the expansion, including a fun Warlords of Draenor release date pool hosted by Alternative Chat. The other common current blogger pastime ties into this, namely a good amount of schmoozing devs, largely on twitter, and a fairly constant stream of questions asking them what else is coming next.

Personally, I still have pages and pages of material to blog about and several videos slated. Beyond that I’ll likely do a few a la minute PVP posts, add to my ongoing leveling saga (you guys WHY did I think this was a good idea?), and I still have a staggeringly large number of battle pets left to write about. My blog is nearing its 1 year anniversary (!) and if I had written about a pet every single day up to this point I’d still have more than half of them to profile. With so much material left, I figured I might as well combine both my ongoing pet profile series and kissing some developer or CM behind for a scrap of information or two. I’m not proud.

Lil Bling is the son of Blingtron 4000, the friendly, flashy robot who dispenses trashy romance novels, healing potions, and other miscellaneous junk in your faction’s Shrine, or outside the inn at Halfhill. Unless you’re on a PVP server, and then the Blingtron outside the inn is pretty much just a trap for sniping lowbies from the roof of the inn with your frost mage.

Look, I already said I’m not proud.

Once he’s crafted, the Blingtron 4000 can be dropped every 4 hours by an engineer. If you’re not an engineer, you’re at the mercy of someone who is. At this point in the expansion, the crafting cost isn’t terribly steep (I did have to use my farm to gather the Spirits of Harmony I needed quickly) so it’s a good option for an alt. For patch 5.4, Blingtron had a few new things added to his loot table of trash, including a Blingtron Brawler’s Guild fight and the new pet Lil Bling.

Lil Bling’s moveset is quite unique and worth looking at. As touched on briefly in the Macabre Marionette post, he is the first Mechanical with the Shattered Defenses debuff with Inflation. Inflation is equally suited to pair with both abilities in the third slot, Launch Rocket and Make It Rain. Make It Rain will win out on fights with a damage cap, like the Celestials, or if you have an extra proc like Call Lightning, but Launch Rocket paired with this buff will all but completely wreck nearly any normal pet.

The other choice in the first slot, SMACKTHAT.EXE, works well with on-hit synergy, but doesn’t provide it. The benefit to that skill over Inflation is you’re not locked in for multiple rounds. Rounding it all out in the middle slot is either the damage dampening Extra Plating, or the mixed bag Blingtron Gift Package, which has a 50/50 shot to either hit really hard or heal. The former choice obviously offers far more control vs the RNG-heavy latter, but I generally find the latter more fun. You can just see the person on the other side of the keyboard wondering what the heck was THAT?!

I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of Lil Bling in strategies that arise during Warlords. As I mentioned, he is the first mechanical battle pet with the Shattered Defenses debuff, so it stands to reason (or maybe to beg the question) that we may be seeing some big, beefy Beasts we need a tiny robot to beat down in the not so distant future.

I would strongly recommend getting one soon, both because of that and because once WoD hits it’s very likely non-engineers won’t be seeing much of this glittery little guy anymore. In addition to the low drop chance from Blingtron’s daily gift, this pet is also tradable, so you may want to just try the auction house. He’s dropped as Uncommon from the box, so if you’re low on Mechanical stones you may want to keep your eyes peeled for the upgraded version.

The dev connection, as alluded to in the preamble, is that Lil Bling is the self-proclaimed son and is shown in the current twitter header of WoW senior game designer Jonathan LeCraft (follow him on twitter at @TheCrafticus). There are many items through the World of Warcraft bearing his name, like the elusive Old Crafty. This includes the pet Crafty, which was live on the 5.4 PTR for a short time, and then unceremoniously axed.

Between Hallow’s Eve and Winter Veil, there is a less flashy holiday known as Pilgrim’s Bounty.

Well, I guess the flash may depend on where you choose to celebrate.

There are several activities and achievements surrounding Pilgrim’s Bounty. The achievements are the goal here, because in order to gain the Plump Turkey battle pet (also the Pilgrim title) you have to complete the Pilgrim meta-achievement. This means you have to complete the following achievements:

Food Fight! – Sitting at a harvest table outside one of your major cities, target a person sitting at the same table and use your ‘pass food’ button (usually hotkeyed to #1 in your seat-cum-vehicle). This is easiest to do day 1, or with friend dragged along for the occasion. Here’s a map of the sites you’ll need to visit.

You can do this at the same time as…

Sharing Is Caring – Use your vehicle to pass out some food, then leave your seat and get in another and pass out that food. Pass one out to each seat before moving on, because you’ll get a stacking series of buffs. This becomes a meta buff if you cycle through all the chairs. You’re now on your way to…

Pilgrim’s Paunch – Get that meta buff from each of your capital cities (Horde Version). If you have a friend who plays a mage, now is the time to promise that she’s totally getting a ton of pets from you for your birthday, just as long as she ports your lazy butt around from city to city for this. You’ll also really want those ports to do…

Now We’re Cooking – The cooking recipes are relatively low level, and even more attainable as one of the main ingredients in one of the recipes is the 1 skill point cooking recipe Spice Bread. The catch you need that mage friend for is that each capital city has a unique ingredient on sale, as well as a few common ones. This means you ought to buy up a job lot of them when you port around, because you need a lot of the cooked foods to complete…

Pilgrim’s Progress – (Alliance Version) Complete each seasonal cooking daily. Each capital city has a unique ingredient on sale, as well as a few common ones. Of course the lady in Thunder Bluff wants pumpkin pie, when the pumpkins are for sale in Undercity, etc. The one catch is that nobody sells turkey. But there are wild ones in Elwynn Forest and Tirisfal Glades…

The Turkinator – You may want to wait to complete this until quite late in the holiday, at off-hours, because with CRZ you’re going to have a hell of a time shooting enough turkeys with this very short buff. I would definitely recommend doing this on a druid or hunter, as both classes have an instant cast spell or two and speed boosts. Try to do it at off hours if at all possible.

On completing each of the daily quests, you can pick one of several items. The first ones I’d go for is the Turkey Shooter.

Turkey Lurkey – Like every other holiday, the achievement where you have to perform an action on a specific member of the opposite faction is an enormous pain, and easier to complete the earlier you start. You use that Turkey Shooter on every race of rogue. I ended up finishing this one last year on the very last day of the holiday by creating a level 1 of the opposite faction and running /who Worgen Rogue. There were 2 of them, and I guessed that the guy who was level 87 and in Townlong had just started the zone. He had, and I got my pet, after a good amount of emoting that I wasn’t going to kill him. The Dwarf, Troll and Worgen seem to be the most difficult to find.

Turkey Shooters are single-use, so you’ll need at minimum 8 of them to get all the rogues. Your shooters disappear when the holiday is over. The other reward from the daily quests, the Pilgrim’s Attire, does not. One achievement involving the attire is time sensitive, but the other can be completed as your leisure.

Pilgrim’s Peril(Horde Version)– Wear your pilgrim gear, and then go to all the cross-faction capital city and sit at the table. You are going to be ganked, by both guards and players, and wearing the Pilgrim stuff makes you an easy kill. If you can res at a table, you can get your achievement the second you res, and then run away. Use the maps above as a guide. If you have an Alliance character I highly recommend doing these achievements on that character. The Horde sites are far more straightforward to access than the Alliance ones for opposite factions, mostly because of the boat travel involved in getting to both Darnassus and The Exodar. This can also be quite a frustrating achievement if you’re trying during peak hours.

Terokkar Turkey Time – The last of the bunch. Wear your quest reward Pilgrim stuff and kill the final boss in Sethekk Halls. If you’re fed up after the PVP and all that, you can put this one on the back burner. You can do this in March or something as long as you kept your Pilgrim clothes.

When you complete them all, you gain that stunning title but more importantly, the Plump Turkey battle pet is now yours!

The Plump Turkey is similar to other battle pets, namely the Highlands Turkey and Turkey. The latter 2 have far better breeds, as the Plump Turkey is only available in H/P, but those are both tamed so will require a bit of legwork. Here speed is important, as one of the main points of strategy to using a Turkey is in the unique stun ability Food Coma. It’s unique in that, not only is a delicious pun (additional pun also intended), but it lasts 2 rounds. In days of yore, people used to go with 3 turkeys and stunlock their pvp opponents until they ragequit. In fact, this is a large part of why the Resilience buff is now a part of the pet battle game. Also punny, Gobble Strike deals small damage but increases your speed by half for several turns.

Sharing a slot with Food Coma is the super popular for PVE debuffer, Flock. It’s quite the gamble in PVP, but the Shattered Defenses debuff is a really important one. Squawk shares a slot with Gobble Strike, dealing small damage and decreasing your opponent’s damage by 25% for several turns. The first slot is a choice between direct damage spells, either Peck or Slicing Wind. Between the decent damage and stun utility it’s an all-around really solid choice as a starter flying pet. It does start off with Uncommon rarity, so eventually you will want to use an upgrade stone on it.

One of the best reasons to nab one of your own is because it’s always nice to have a snack close at hand.

A brand new holiday pet! And this one is super cool and useful as a battler. Be still my beating heart!

Oh. Yeah, that is kind of an insensitive turn of phrase to use here.

The reason it looks like it’s waving in that screenshot is because it also does the Undead headbanging dance. When I was fooling around with it on PTR, any time we stopped moving, it started dancing with its wee little maracas. It also dances through battles when it’s not performing an action. I wasn’t lying when I said it’s cool.

So, what’s the catch? Its quest is only available for two days a year.

The Macabre Marionette is available as a part of the Day Of The Dead festival, loosely based on the Mexican holiday Día de Muertos, but previously it wasn’t a companion pet per se. It was an unlearnable item in your bags which spawned this little dude, like the very old school companion pets. It disappeared once the two-day festival was over. It looks like Blizzard changed their mind for this year, and the Marionette will be trainable as a battle pet at long last.

In order to see the spirits and obtain the Marionette, you have to go to the graveyard of the city where your racial quartermaster is. This is especially confusing for Worgen, whose leader hangs out doing nothing in Stormwind while their ‘home’ tree thinger and quartermaster is in Darnassus. Most other races are relatively straightforward. Trolls, Orcs & Goblins go to Orgrimmar, Gnomes and Dwarves go to Ironforge, etc. The graveyards in Dalaran and Shattrath allow all comers, too.

Before you leave the city for the graveyard, you should grab at least one Simple Flour and one Ice Cold Milk. The quest objective is a Bread Of The Dead, the recipe for which is obtained in the graveyard for 20s. Note that you can only cook the bread over a special blue campfire located directly near the vendor. The other catch is that in order to see the quest NPC at all, you have to use a Marigold. Marigolds are cheap, but have an extremely short duration. You can repeat the quest multiple times on the same account during the holiday, and can do it with any level character, but you cannot do quests in multiple locations (eg, going from the Worgen spirit in Darnassus to the Dalaran spirit).

It’s really not much of a hoop to jump through, but it had best not be for such a tiny window of acquisition. Though, luckily, it is tradeable, so if you repeat the quest a few times on a few characters you may be able to make a quick handful of gold in a month or two.

The pet’s revamp into a battler is very interesting. Note that it starts off Uncommon, so it’ll require a stone. It has a few old abilities–siphon life/death & decay in the second slot is a fairly common Undead MO, and Bone Bite has shown up in the past as well. It has the new Macabre Maraca, a 100% accuracy humanoid nuke, which makes me want to try pitting the Marionette against Yu’la. It has Bone Barrage, an ability similar to the critter Nut Barrage, only undead. Lastly, also very interestingly, it has Dead Man’s Party, which is similar to Flock.

The reason I find this moveset interesting is because, not only will it make it a terror against dragonkin, but it seems like Blizzard has been making pets with a moveset similar to this recently. There have always been Swarm-ers, Flock-ers and Stampede-ers, featuring Critter, Flying and Beast damage respectively, but Lil Bling was just added with a mechanical version of this ability, and now this pet for the undead version. Undead and Mechanical are rather under-represented caught pets, and this brand of move is such a good one for PVE synergy it makes me curious for the future. What new pets are coming, and what new fights are being planned for the next expansion? I’d be willing to bet some imaginary money that we see either some kind of Torrential Downpour ability like this from caught Aquatics next expansion, or maybe a Sonorous Frog Croak akin to Howl.